People speak in everyday life in at least two languages fluently, clearly show later, the loss of mental ability than monolingual people. A study of the Spanish Universitat Jaume I in Castelló shows.
A comparison of monolingual and bilingual patients with the same degree of dementia showed that the loss of brain matter in bilingual people is greater. Nevertheless, they perform in Tests of their memory as well as the monolingual. In the subsequent observation over seven months, the bilingual patients lost less brain volume, and their mental abilities declined more slowly than people who spoke only one language. The researchers conclude that bilingual people have a "mental Reserve" have that protects you from dementia.
Dementia is progressing slower
In the study, one hundred and two – and monolingual patients with slight mental impairments, at an average age of 73 years were studied. People, the languages often alternately in Catalan and Spanish, were bilingual. This is a complex mental performance, because both languages are similar. Persons for whom Catalan is not or only little familiar with was, were classified as monolingual.
Earlier, it was shown that bilingual people develop an average of five years later, to dementia than monolingual people. Whether a promotion of bilingualism for the treatment of dementia is, however, is still unclear.
ZOU